Bartemius scowled at the door to his office, upon which his secretary had just rapped — a rather hesitant rapping, but still more than enough to interrupt him, distract him from the report he'd been trying to get through all afternoon. He'd just told the incompetent wastrel that he was not to be disturbed! "What part of no interruptions did you not understand, Penderghast?!"

"Ah, apologies, Director," the young wizard muttered, cracking the door open. "But, um...the Chief Warlock is here to see you."

And of course Dumbledore's orders superceded Crouch's own. Nor could he reasonably turn him away himself, even if it did mean he was probably never going to get through the briefing his office had managed to assemble on the current political situation between the British and Irish muggles. (This was going to be a disaster, Bartemius just knew it.)

Dumbledore, when he entered, looked to be in nearly as poor a mood as Bartemius himself, fixing him with an ice-blue glare over the rim of his spectacles and casting privacy charms as soon as he entered the room. The door closed behind him with a slightly louder clap than necessary, and where he would normally have conjured an overstuffed armchair for himself, today he seemed to be too agitated to sit, instead pacing behind the visitors' chairs.

"What can I help you with, Your Excellency?" Bartemius asked, trying to keep his own irritation from his expression, though he hardly stood a chance of keeping it out of his tone.

The Chief Warlock drew a small scroll from his sleeve and threw it on the desk between them. It bounced once, unrolled slightly. Bartemius, almost by reflex, had begun to reach for it even before he hissed, "This."

Half a second later, he had it stripped open — the signature matched the copy of the letter the ICW had forwarded to him so many months ago, and the one Castalia Lovegood had shown him only last week. The text, however... Was that Old French? Aside from the language, it was fundamentally identical to the other two letters. (The one addressed to the I.C.W. had, of course, been written in modern standard French, and Miss Lovegood's was Welsh.)

"Did you want me to translate it for you?" he asked, even as his eyes sought out the addressee. The...fae-touched child of Magic sometimes known as Perenelle Flamel?! "Wait — Perenelle Flamel is a metamorph? I thought she was dead!"

He was certain he'd heard her death announced, at any rate, along with her husband's, back in...the beginning of April? Not long before...

"So did I. Until she appeared in my office yesterday to discuss her accommodations for the duration of the Tournament. Tell me, Barty, did you know about this– this change of plans? Did you approve it?"

Of course he had — or, the monster he had the misfortune to have sired had, cackling with amusement as he forced Bartemius to sign off on the changes under the Imperius. Though he might have agreed even without the Unforgivable coercion. As he'd told everyone who'd asked, then and since, what was he supposed to do when an ICW representative contacted him out of the blue to congratulate him on this most excellent idea to foster a genuine attempt at improving Britain's relations with the rest of Europe by affording them a seat at the judges' table? Of course he had said yes!

But the way in which Dumbledore put that question to him... "Are you saying you didn't know?"

"No. Yesterday was the first I'd heard of it! Why didn't you tell me?!"

"She wrote on behalf of the Wizengamot! You're the Chief Warlock! I assumed you knew!"

"I. Did. Not. Know." Dumbledore's fury was nearly palpable. Understandable, he'd rather been dragged over the coals the past few weeks. But that was, so far as Bartemius was concerned, all his own fault — he should have known better than to try to legilimise an unwitting student, even if she was muggleborn, to say nothing of what must have been going on under his nose if he'd legitimately thought the Potter boy to be dead when he'd announced it to the nation at large.

"The I.C.W. contacted me back in April about their letter, and Castalia Lovegood only last week — I understand she was travelling, and only just received it. What was I supposed to tell them? No, we don't want you to be involved in our attempt to foster international cooperation? Of course I authorised it! No, we don't want a famous duelist and executioner of bloody Dark Lords to be a judge in our tournament? You do realise Lovegood is one of the most well-recognised, most popular British citizens, anywhere in the world? And I'm certainly not going to say no to Flamel, either, who would?"

"And the fourth of these...replacement judges?"

"I have no idea, they haven't contacted me yet, and my letters have been unable to find Black. The fourth mystery judge is, however, the least of my concerns at the moment. All potential for mischief aside, those who have announced their participation thus far are...not unreasonable choices, truly. No — I am far more concerned about the fact that she invited the muggles!"

"...Muggles? Why on Earth— Which muggles?"

"The Queen, apparently. And the President of Ireland." In fact, that the judges' panel had been altered without proper discussion and negotiation had rather been overshadowed by the Crown's Magical Liaison showing up at his office later that afternoon, demanding to know what the hell a 'Triwizard Tournament' was.

Dumbledore gave him a very flat, unimpressed look. "I'm sorry Bartemius, my hearing must be going, I thought you said that Lyra Black invited the Queen of England and the President of Ireland to—"

"Don't give me that dragonshite, you heard me perfectly clearly." She'd just written to them directly, apparently, used some old Black Cloak protocol to get the Queen's letter to her staff while the Irish President's had apparently been owled to his residence.

The Chief Warlock stared in aghast silence, his mouth gaping slightly. It would have been comical if it hadn't been a completely reasonable reaction to hearing this news — news Bartemius had, again, thought the Head of the Wizengamot had already known, given that the girl had written on behalf of the Wizengamot. Hell, that had been the entire reason he hadn't asked Dumbledore who the three other judges were meant to be, in the months since the ICW, the Queen, and the Irish had first contacted him — he'd assumed the man wanted some deniability in the whole process.

There was plenty of precedent for the Noble and Most Ancient Houses to take it upon themselves to fulfil treaty obligations on behalf of the governing body when the Chief Warlock or the Wizengamot as a whole was unwilling or unable to do so. Generally this was due to such obligations being politically difficult to accommodate, and (unofficially) requested of them by the Chief Warlock, which was precisely what Bartemius had thought had happened here. They had an undeniable legal obligation to inform the muggle rulers about the Tournament, but there was so much potential for this to go incredibly badly that it was hardly surprising that Dumbledore might want to take care of it in such a way that he could deny responsibility when it inevitably became a political nightmare.

Bartemius had actually felt rather bad for the young Lyra Black, whom he'd assumed couldn't possibly have realised the potential ramifications of inviting the muggles to the Tournament when Dumbledore had, he presumed, asked her to do it. But she was only a schoolgirl, he'd thought — that would probably help to mitigate any public condemnation, should Dumbledore be forced to shift the blame for a major international incident to her. And it would hardly be a great tragedy if the fallout from whatever incident would inevitably occur prevented Bellatrix Lestrange's daughter from reviving the House of Black. Every bloody one of them was a menace to society.

Case in point: the girl had apparently taken it upon herself to set the stage for said major international incident, whatever it might end up being.

"And the Muggle Liaison Office has been, as you might imagine, worse than useless. I tried to pass it off to Richards, but she shunted the whole problem back to me since I was already involved in the Tournament and all they do is come up with fake school brochures and falsify muggle identity papers! Nevermind that diplomatic relations with the muggles are meant to be the entire point of their office."

"That is it," the old man fumed. "First point on the next agenda is sanctioning the House of Black for claiming authority to speak on behalf of the entire body of the Wizengamot."

Authority that rightly belonged to him, he meant.

"Best not," Bartemius advised him. "While she might not have had the authority to issue the invitation, she was entirely correct to do so." Might, because he'd already looked into it, and while Lords weren't supposed to speak on behalf of their peers without a vote to that effect, that was convention, not law — the institution of the Wizengamot dated to a very different time, the internal codes governing members hadn't kept up with changing circumstances. "Drawing attention to the fact that you didn't ask her to extend the invitation would only make people question why a schoolgirl who's been the head of her House for less than a year is more familiar with the Treaty of Nineteen Thirteen than the Chief Warlock."

"I am entirely familiar with the Treaty in question, but no one has invited a representative of the Crown to observe an international event in decades! The Tournament, being a matter of inter-school competition, rather than a diplomatic effort, is far too trivial a gathering to warrant such an invitation."

Yes, and the Quidditch World Cup was nothing more than a sporting match. Bartemius knew the self-serving arguments quite well. He'd written half of them. "Except it's being framed as an effort to foster international understanding and cooperation. And the I.C.W. is involved, now. In which case one might ask why the Chief Warlock was attempting to exclude the muggles from participation, or even observing the proceedings."

The reason, of course, was that what the muggles didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Who would tell them if Magical Britain wasn't quite living up to its treaty obligations? And inviting them would only make things more complicated than necessary, especially given the current tenuousness of the ceasefire agreement between the Ministry and Bellatrix Lestrange neé Black — who was, Bartemius suspected, not nearly so dead as the DLE had claimed. Not, of course, that the Truce was anything official, but given that 'former' Death Eaters occupied positions of power throughout the government, if the understanding between the two factions unravelled it would tear the nation apart.

Not to mention, as he had gathered from what little he had managed to read of that report (between constant interruptions), Muggle Britain and Ireland were dangerously close to some sort of (civil?) war themselves. They were legally obligated to invite both, but bringing their delegations to the same event seemed...unwise.

Bartemius wasn't certain he'd ever seen Albus Dumbledore look quite this frustrated before, and he'd been present at the trial where Narcissa Malfoy had actually managed to successfully present an Imperius Defense on behalf of her husband. (He still had no idea how she'd managed it, because Junior had told him, not long after Katherine's death, that Malfoy had recruited him while they were still in school — he certainly hadn't been coerced into joining the Dark Lord in his late twenties.)

"I suppose there is nothing to be done about it now," he ground out after a moment, very reluctantly. "We shall simply have to cope."

"It's going to be a disaster," Bartemius informed him. Not that he thought for a moment that Dumbledore didn't already know that, he simply felt the need to say something, and there really was nothing to be said. And even less to be done to correct the situation because, well, technically Black's invitation had corrected the situation. Rescinding it would cause even more political problems than allowing the muggles to attend, and go against the law.

The Chief Warlock nodded grimly. "I must admit, I should be hard pressed to think of a single way in which the situation might be made more complex, but—"

He was interrupted by a frantic knock on the door, which Penderghast threw open half a second later, holding a sheet of paper at arm's length, as though it might burst into flame at any moment.

"What is the meaning of this?" Bartemius snapped, over the boy's incoherent stuttering.

"It— This— It was in the post — the muggle post! I— You should— I thought you'd want to see it, sir. Both of you." He halted at the edge of the desk, the page wavering between the two of them, as though he wasn't quite certain which of them he ought to give it to.

Dumbledore snatched it from his hand before Bartemius could order him to give it over. With a single final, fearful glance at the thing, Penderghast fled. Dumbledore, meanwhile, appeared to be transfixed.

"Well?" Bartemius demanded. "What is it?"

"...but I dare say that– that insane, loathsome little girl will find a way to manage it," he said, sounding strangely distant, as though in shock, perhaps. After another second he managed to tear his eyes from the letter, meeting Bartemius's with an expression of horror. "I believe this is precisely the sort of situation in which we should be described in common parlance as completely fucked."

"What is it?" Bartemius repeated.

Dumbledore let the letter fall to the desk in front of him. "I believe you will find, Bartemius, that the fourth mystery judge is, in fact, not the least of your problems."

Bartemius, who had just managed to make it through the letterhead (Miskatonic University — College of Art and Design, Office of the Dean), nodded dumbly, the most relevant sentence drawing his eye as though written in red, despite, in fact, having been plainly typed on simple muggle stationary, the text no different from any other word there.

The University is pleased to accept Lady Black's invitation on behalf of the British Wizengamot to send a representative to serve as a judge in the revival of the Triwizard Tournament, to be held this year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...

They were, indeed, completely fucked.


Crouch's assistant Penderghast is not the same Penderghast who keeps annoying Dora, but they're certainly closely related.

Yes, Lyra did write every one of her invitations in a different language, because she was manic and if she's going to do that whole proper treaty obligation thing, might as well be polite about it, extend the invitation in the recipient's native language:

Irish - Gaelic

Crown - English

ICW - French

Miskatonic - English with American spellings

Lovegood - Welsh

Flamel - Old French

It can be reasonably assumed that the vast majority of every-day citizens don't realise that it's a treaty requirement for the magical community to invite muggle authorities to send a representative to witness diplomatic events like the Tournament which are held on the land they share, and the Ministry obviously has quite a lot of influence with the mainstream media in Magical Britain. Which means that yes, if shit hits the fan, it's perfectly possible that Dumbledore could convince the public that Lyra was out of line in inviting them, and the Wizengamot that he wouldn't have invited them himself. (Or at least, he could have done before the Harry Potter is (Not?) Dead scandal.) The Wizengamot, like Crouch, would likely suspect that he asked her to do it. They'd just be all too happy to pin the blame on her because the House of Black is a menace, and the Noble Houses know this better than anyone.

Barty Crouch's wife doesn't have a name in canon, so now she's Katherine.